Originally Posted by
CPMaverick
VA schedules are like the weather in Melbourne. If you don't like it today, it will be different tomorrow.
I'm not sure why VA has the occasional additional mid day departure from LAX, VA6. It only operates one or two times a week (usually Wednesdays and always Saturdays as far as I can tell). It is accompanied by a late night departure from BNE VA9 to supply the next day's more typical late night LAX departure VA8.
I think the only reason they can do this is because they don't fly every day. On the days they have no flights scheduled, the next day they get going earlier. I can't be bothered to check, maybe the aircraft go on the MEL or SYD rotation on their 'off day', but if not they sit longer than the QF planes overall. In your case, there is no LAX-BNE on Jan 12th so the aircraft may even be sitting at LAX overnight, unless it is arriving from elsewhere.
If you don't want aircraft sitting at LAX, basically you need to double your flights
and your aircraft, or have an off-day like VA do. Because the flight round trip is over 24 hours.
Since flights are only profitable if there is demand, I would guess that doubling up on capacity from LAX-Australia isn't viable at the moment, especially if it involves a lot more aircraft in the fleet. So the LAX crowd get to see lots of cool Australian aircraft on their lunch break.
Enjoy VA, I quite enjoy their product, especially long-haul.
what was getting at is VA seem to be making most of their small fleet, whereas other airlines don't.
Fares in late December early January are the highest of the year, due to Xmas holidays in USA & school holidays in Australia which run from late Nov to early Feb.
I thought conventional wisdom was that more than 2 aircraft required to operate route like BNE/LAX/BNE daily.
VA are doing BNE, SYD & MEL/LAX (BNE & MEL not daily) with only 5 aircraft in total. A midday flight out of LAX to BNE doesn't suit everyone, eg. don't think you can connect from anywhere on the east coast, but it's fine to connect, as long as not trying to get from anywhere east of say Denver.
VA don't seem to be giving away seats on their Sat midday flight LAX/BNE compared with other days when they depart at 2200, so they must be reasonably popular.